I developed a crazy face rash after I got engaged to a guy I must have known somewhere I should not marry. I hadn't articulated this to myself, so my face told the world instead.

I wish somebody knew whether or not I'm Jewish.

I needed to understand this random bad bit of luck as part of a bigger design. Otherwise I was suffering meaninglessly. This made the suffering a lot worse.

I guess what I find so interesting about memory, and its role in a person's identity, is how the attempt to achieve accuracy requires you to remove yourself from your life in an authorial manner.

A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.

A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be.

I obviously read and adore traditional fiction. I teach traditional fiction, I also teach all kind of not-so-traditional fiction. And since I'm such a plot buff, and I'm really such a narrative buff, I can't seem to relinquish my - not just reliance - but excitement about those traditional techniques.